Sunday, January 31, 2016

For a heartbeat, a lifetime of devotion triumphed over dementia’s
raging incursion. As the opening bars of ‘Jana Gana Mana’ to mark the end of
this year’s Republic Day Parade in Delhi drifted from the television, my
89-year-old father started and then attempted to stand up on legs that no
longer quite work. Somewhere inside a mind whose circuits have almost been obliterated
by dementia, the old soldier knew that this was his country’s song and that he
had to stand to attention.

He isn't perfect. But in the 30-odd years he was an officer in the Indian Air Force and
the decades since, commitment to India and its people were the values he lived
by. And one of those values was to stand to attention for the national anthem.

Once, a few years after he retired, we were at an event in my
school. The school band struck up the national anthem, not to signal the end of
proceedings, but as part of their repertoire. And like a shot, my dad was on
his feet; this drew some strange looks, but we all followed. I squirmed then at
the unwelcome attention that came our way. But now, whenever I think about that
incident, it’s pride I feel, dusted with a pinch of shame for having squirmed
back then.

And that is what I breathed into his ear a few
days ago. Hoping that somewhere inside what lingers of his mind a cluster of
neurons would fire and let him know how very proud I am of him and how much of
the good there is in me is largely because of him.